Pushkinotics

Pushkinotics

Introit//Detroit

Begin here a poetic journey

With rhymes to spot, but not to kill,

Engage in a prosodic tourney –

With whom? – Myself? – A page to fill?

Is (who can doubt?) as idiotic

As carving glyphs in some demotic

Never learned in school or sport,

Or pleading your case in traffic court.

“Incompetent!! Your license forfeit!”

Proclaim the critic and the cop,

Banging their trochees on the top

Of my poor iambs. “Move it! Morph it!

Get in gear! Fall into line!

Your ass is going to pay a fine,

“A fat one too, for breaking orders –

Rules, that is – against all rhymes.

You think you’ll sneak across our borders?

Not when we’ve nailed you for these crimes.

Scofflaws get the longest sentence –

Slammer time will bring repentance.

So pay up now and wipe that smile

Off your face, or in a mile

We’ll haul you in to answer for it.”

Intimidated, nerves all shot,

I paid the Law what cash I’d got

And whimpered off. I might deplore it,

But what to do save slip away

And hope to rhyme another day?

Here’s an epic – or a story,

Anyway – that’s hard to start.

Somewhere, once, I heard of glory,

A notion that I took to heart.

It was all my brother’s doing –

His the brain of poems brewing,

His the night music turned up loud –

Wolfgang, Ludwig, all that crowd.

Languages, though foreign to me,

Were, he said, the things to learn –

Midnight oil was there to burn.

Love and Art infusing through me

Made me lift my eyes above

Anything but Art and Love.

Genius was the thing I had not,

Was not, could not ever be;

Often now I think it sad not

To have lived at ease and free

With the guys in my age bracket,

Made with them the usual racket

Guys like them are wont to make,

‘Stead of acting like a fake

Intellectual too good to go out

With the others, hang around

Talking of the things they found

Girls were up for at a blowout,

Or even at a chaperoned dance.

Alas, I lost my every chance.

Chance to be like all the others…

No, that being could not be.

Being torn between two brothers,

Bookish one, the other free

To fly off athwart the cloudland,

Ready to defend his proud land,

Roaring from a carrier deck,

Confident he’d never wreck

Uncle Sam’s expensive engine,

Or if he did, he had the stuff,

The right stuff, the righteous bluff,

The real cool to take revenge on

Hap and mishap, walk away

To laugh and fly another day.

This free brother, what to call him?

Call him Jack, for Jack he was.

To say “Julius” would appall him –

Us too – though ‘twas his name because

He was Daddy’s firstborn offspring:

Julius Byron, Jr.: Calling

Him all that was never done,

Not for real, and not for fun.

Jack was in the Scouts, went hiking

A hundred miles up to Vermont.

I still see him, nonchalant,

Tossing off this feat so striking

In a little brother’s eyes,

Strolling home ‘neath summer skies.

Father farmed in Berkshire County,

Had a herd of forty cows,

Lived and loved the rich earth’s bounty,

Kept a team and two fat sows.

Milk and cream brought in our living,

Eggs as well, but on Thanksgiving

Turkey was the feast of choice.

I can hear Aunt Alma’s voice

Call us all to dinner table

At her house in Troy, New York –

Ample work for knife and fork

At Uncle Henry’s farm and stable.

Dad and Henry, farmers both,

Worked the earth and fostered growth.

Growth, alas, was not forthcoming

For my parents’ second child:

Little David, whose whole summing

Up could easily be filed

Under “Infant Death: Stenosis.”

Didn’t live to know neurosis

Like his youngest brother Ned;

Lived one month and then was dead.

Little David, so much younger,

Yet left older bones than mine –

Tiny bones…I can’t define

Why your paradox seems stranger

Midst the mysteries of time

Than other puzzles in my rhyme.

Back there on the farm, remember…?

No, ‘tis just my mother’s tale –

Jack, an only child, dissembler,

Went about on hill and dale

Talking with an odd companion –

Forest, stream, or desert canyon

Hid not stranger chum than he:

A little friend that none could see –

Pointing to the sky above them

Where a biplane buzzed and flew,

Droned and lazily withdrew

Into summer clouds. To rove them

On bright wings one day, Jack said,

Was the dream that filled his head.

Ah, the good years were not over

When another child appeared –

A real brother, fresh as clover,

Blue-eyed, blond, beloved, endeared

In Grandmother’s true affection

And to all who’ve had connection

With his life esteemed, admired.

A gentle soul, he never tired

Of his books, his stamp collecting,

Model planes (but not to fly).

Meticulous and somewhat shy,

Quiet, deep…but intersecting

With these attributes, a rage….

For more of Philip, turn the page.

Philip was the dearest sibling

Of my earliest days’ recall;

‘Neath his tutelage no quibbling –

Neddy loved him best of all.

In our wars on the veranda

Each would try to throw and land a

Pebble rocket on the fort

Where the other’s king held court.

All our troops were painted soldiers

Made of lead – no “G.I.’s,” these.

Smartly uniformed to please

On parade…. But one still molders,

Mayhap, in a lonely grave –

His life, alas, we could not save.

I recall his scarlet tunic

And his yellow-gold chapeau….

Earlier than news from Munich

Warned the world of darkest woe,

Albion produced a scandal,

A royal love too hot to handle,

Whose gossip reached across the sea.

All of that was naught to me,

But when Philip’s fallen hero,

The redcoat of the noble mien,

Perished nobly in his pain,

‘Twas no private of rank zero,

But a king we laid to rest:

For Edward VIII we did our best.

How those days come back to haunt me,

And the nights when Phil and I

Told ghost stories – would it daunt me

In the dark to peek and pry

Into secret realms of horror,

Ghostly gibberings, shrieks of terror,

Bunked out on the sleeping porch

Summer eves sans switch or torch.

Children love to scare each other,

And the youngest scares the best.

Little Neddy in his nest

Heard the stairs creak after Mother

Left him tucked in for the night…

A low moaning…trembling…fright.

It was Jack approaching, surely,

Blowing a long powder horn,

Creeping in a mischief purely

Brotherly – or did some lorn,

Long-forgotten thing come groaning,

In its endless grief intoning

The sad story of our house?

In the walls the scurrying mouse,

In the cellar the cold mildew,

In the attic unknown caves

Where an unknown specter raves

On windy nights, would send a chill through

Any boy of four or five,

So scared he scarcely felt alive.

If my memory serves me rightly,

As I trust it still may do,

Came a summer when I sprightly

Flew along our road – skidoo!

Trike to bike I graduated,

Learned a pleasure not soon sated,

“Look! No hands!” the triumph song.

Who had taught me? Jack? You’re wrong!

It was Phil, the gentle Philip,

Who trained me how to balance right,

Got me pedaling out of sight

Over bank and bump and hill up

Along the border of our farm –

Tumbles, yes, but little harm.

Philip worked out in the dairy

(Each of us had chores assigned)

Washing bottles, brisk and merry,

On a whirling brush. You’d find

Nary a spot of milk gone rancid

In those bottles once they’d dancèd

Round that ever-whirling brush.

Philip midst the crash and rush

Of milk cases, pasteurizer,

Cans of raw milk, warm from cow,

Cooler, separator – how

He preserved, sans tranquilizer,

Standing at the foaming tub,

His sang froid … aye, there’s the rub.

Rub it any way you may wish,

Philip had a temper too.

Better I should not display mish-

Mash of memory, mulligan stew,

Succulent but not savóry,

Though a regular terrible story

Maybe’s what you’ve waited for….

Lady or tiger behind this door?

Jack, who drove both car and tractor,

Loved to drive his brothers wild –

Was a tease (I know!), and mild

Phil may have been, but there’s a factor

In his psyche far from meek.

Nor was the evidence far to seek.

Jack wore for years upon his forehead

Scars beside his birthmark bump.

One a clipped can end enscorèd

Between his eyebrow and the lump.

Stitches were required to mend it,

That wound, and medical care to tend it

Until it healed, as heal it did,

Though the anger-mark could not be hid.

Who flung that disk, that metal missile?

Alas, it was the gentle Phil.

He must, I guess, remember still

What it was that made him bristle.

And then there came the scissors flung –

The memory’s sharp…. Should Ned be hung?

All this violence paints us wrongly.

We three were a brother band

Bound by name and farm, and strongly

Caring for our father’s land.

Jack would shovel cow manure,

Precious stuff, a sure cure

For the neediness of soil;

Philip, rubber-aproned, toil

Hours keeping bottles spotless

(Once one broke and cut his arm –

Another scar of days on the farm);

Ned was little, so he caught less

Heavy work, but had his chores:

Warder of the henhouse doors,

Chicken feeder, egg collector –

Duties never to forget,

Lest some elder sib, inspector,

Find him out, refuse to let

Little Neddy get away with

Absent-minded play, or stay with

Silly lies – “I did!” No, no!

Little Neddy has to grow

Up…. ‘Deed, a grownup farmer

Was what Neddy wished to be

(Most days)…. Ah, but the mind is free

To be doctor, to be harmer

Of no life … or go out west…

Cowboys, Indians, and the rest.

But we were already cowboys –

Wild Indians, too, I’ll have you know –

“Taking the cows down” is how joys

Of farm life, like hay to mow,

Picture themselves in mind’s reflector,

The typical and supreme selector

Of which scenes are the best to keep.

Winding from barn below the steep

And cowpathed hills along the meadows

Dew-drenched early mornings went

All three boys plus collie, sent

To guide the cattle through the shadows

Of the riverbank to where

The grass grew lush in the summer air.

Haying season was one climax

Of the farm boys’ year, for sure.

Sweating muscles heaved the high rack’s

Mounded hay with forks that skewer

More than hay if caution falters.

Boys in haymows – jumpers, vaulters,

Leapers through the hayseed air,

Joyous summers, brown skins bare…

But another scar, on Jack’s leg,

Added to his hardy wounds:

Tines were waiting in the mounds.

Never mind, Jack was no pegleg –

Bodies young can stand the strife,

Laugh it off, in love with life.

Life to love included chopping

Of the tasseled stalks of corn,

Made to ensilage by a whopping

Belted, bellowing beast, blast-borne

Up the long pipe, in and over,

Raining down, food sweet as clover

For our cattle’s winter fare:

In the filling silo, air

Thick and sticky – hardly breathe it

Could the naked, trampling boys,

Bathed in syrup, knowing joys

Wild, mysterious: drawn to sheathe it

In the August God of Maize,

The keen, bare blade of youthful days.

One might pause here to reflect on

Time-wrought changes in what counts

To our sense as near perfection:

Machines that roar, whose echoes bounce

Down delighted ears to eardrums

Glad to waken from their doldrums

To an ecstasy of noise;

Or the color red, beloved of boys

(Of Ned, at least): an engine screaming

On the way to quench a fire

(Also red, and burning higher

With each moment), a bomber seeming

(This was later) to graze our roof,

So low it flew, so proud the proof

Of our nation’s mighty airforce

In the time we were at war….

Nothing noisy was a scare-source:

Little Ned enjoyed the roar.

Strange, then, that the pallid fellow

Ten years on disdained the bellow

Lustier lungs let out in sport,

Or hotrods ripping apart the dirt.

But let’s postpone that tale till later

And explain that darling Ned

In his farm days rose from bed,

Eased out like an alligator

(Catch that rhyme!), all quiet-like

On summer morns for a dew-drenched hike

To watch the birds: booted in rubber

(The grass grew high), and guide in hand,

Without a sound, as taught by Mother,

All by himself he’d stop and stand

To observe the doings of the sparrows,

Finches perched on plows and harrows,

Bluebirds, blackbirds shoulder-patched,

Nestlings, younglings newly hatched,

Thrushes in the apple orchard,

Swallows in their elegant suits,

Screaming jays, and in cahoots

With murder-crows, the birds that tortured

(So he read) their living prey,

Impaling it to die all day.

The shrike, alas, he never spotted,

But the evening whippoorwill

(Poor Will, indeed) might still be totted

For name and cry in a list to fill

Of the suffering nature harbors

In among her flowering arbors,

Teaching the instructable mind

Dame Mother is not always kind.

Kindness is in fact a fable

Some nature-lovers love to tell,

As do mystics, making the fell

Tyger and lamb to share one stable,

Lion and pard to munch on grass,

And otherwise act just like an ass.

An oriole (remember Neddy?

Watcher of birds? Oh, yes, that lad…)

On a summer day, and Ned was ready

To find the day both good and glad,

But the sighting of a scarlet tanager

Sealed a whole summer – no avian manager

Could make it perfecter than that:

A burst of red, a pure éclat.

The point of this is that the quiet

Of his bird walks shows a side

Ned saw deep in himself with pride

As superior to the riot

And the babble of the boys

Boasting and quarreling over toys.

Young Neddy was a timid creature,

There’s no way to hide the fact;

Even his most fondest teacher

Must have observed the thing he lacked:

Nerve to run out with the others,

Kick the ball, defend his druthers,

Use his fists to blacken eyes,

Take on bullies, whatever their size –

All the things that show a tough guy

In the making, or Prince Val

Ready to defend a pal

Weaker than he against the rough guy

Who likes to beat young sissies up.

No, Ned would never win the cup

In athletic competition

Or the contest that is life.

Momma’s boy was his condition

(So he feared), avoiding strife,

Standing aside with air superior,

Though he knew himself inferior

To the meanest little brat

Brought up to know just where it’s at,

The thing that matters, the thing that scares ‘em,

The hard eye with muscle backed

And filthy mouth sans teeth intact –

No nuance there – the grin that bares ‘em

Daring all comers to come and fight.

Maybe this brat was not too bright,

Maybe he was behind in schoolwork,

Held back for a year or two,

He never wasted a thought on fool work,

Stuff in books, but honed his true

And unapologetic nature:

“Me First!” and grabbed, despite his stature

(Stunted, we said, from smoking butts –

Unfiltered then – picked up from ruts

And roadways, Lucky Strikes and Camels,

Chesterfields, the ‘30s brands),

Grabbed, I say, or made demands,

This scion of the house of Hamels

(‘Tis him I sing of), Dirty Dave,

Ned’s enemy he could not brave.

“Demands,” you say? We miss your meaning –

Tell us what David had in mind.

Tell you? Well, the thing’s demeaning….

The filthiest stuff that he could find –

Bovine or human, ‘twas still manure

Dave used a broken stick to skewer

And to stick in my face:

“Eat it!” says Dave. But that disgrace,

At least, young Ned refused to suffer.

Others? Well, David’s favorite fight

Was a kickin’ fight…. Shod tough and tight,

Dave, in leather highcuts, rougher

Far than Ned’s soft rubber boots,

Aimed for the shins…. Who persecutes

The meek acquires a lifelong habit,

A joy in pain and others’ fear,

An itch to kill and skin a rabbit,

To boast of all his murdered deer…

Such schoolboy bullies, grown to hard-ass

Bootcamp buddies, hick or smart-ass,

Drawing blood and blackening eyes,

Brazen, sniggering, telling lies,

Feel within them a real swagger

Justifying all they do –

Dopes to dupe and broads to screw –

In the only eyes that matter,

The mean eyes of Number One:

“Lookit the little sissy run!”

[Time out now for Esperanza

(The idol of my latter days)

To ponder – savor? – what a stanza

Made to Pushkin’s model lays

Before the omnivórous reader

(Fond of both jazz and Schubert’s Lieder)

In the way of telling a tale

In bursts of verse that seldom fail

To rise unto the heights of dogg’rel.

Whatever faults they else may have,

These rhymes at least provide a salve

For the black beast, the mangy mongrel,

That dogs his own dim, fading tracks,

Digging for bones, sniffing for facts.]

Enough of this, our tale is waiting

Some tranquiller talk of childhood joys,

And lest a penchant for the sating

Of long resentment, hate that destroys

The will to live and love our brothers

Hang like deadly smog that smothers

Tender memories, cherished times,

Let us banish from these rhymes

All that enmity toward David,

The tough runt living down the road,

The menacing and ugly toad

That…. No, the curse my mind is gravid

Withal I’ll hold within the bone

That holds all hell … and a flung stone.

The peculiar thing’s that Peter,

David’s younger brother, was,

All my farm days, the friend sweeter

Than whom none had I: Because,

Unlike David, Pete was gentle,

Neither rude nor temperamental,

I was content to chum with him

When solitude was not my whim.

Two boon companions need no third one –

A gang of four would be even worse –

Such became my mantra verse

(For such as I ‘twas no absurd one):

“Two’s a company, three’s a crowd,

Four’s too much, and five’s not allowed.”

Peter was but one year younger

(David two years older) than I,

But he thought of me as stronger,

Wiser…. Willing when I had a try

At explaining our country’s history –

To him such things were just a mystery –

To listen to Ned’s earnest tone

In awed respect, without the groan

Of a little kid’s impatience….

Nineteen forty, Pete was six,

Ned seven…. Ned was out to nix

(Like all his folks) the patent nonsense,

The outrageous hubris of FDR:

“No Third Term!” our cry of war.

I can’t say if Pete was baffled

By his friend’s political views –

Don’t even know if the Hamels raffled

Off their numerous votes to the crews

That beset us in that old New Deal,

When, betaxed, we cursed the new steal

Of our freedom and our cash,

Taxes and rules that none could slash,

That in Republican estimation

Were the bane of honest men

(Such as Daddy). Time and again,

“It’s the country’s ruination,”

Became the burden of our talk.

Pete and I would take a walk

Down the meadow, where I’d tell him

The great George was not like this.

Redcoat armies could not quell him:

Let rains slash and snow storms hiss,

Food run out, enlistments falter,

Battles be lost…. He’d never alter

His peerless purpose to see us through…

And he did! And, Pete, I’ll tell you true,

That hero could have been elected

(Or been a king) as long as he wished –

But JUST TWO TERMS, and off he swished

Back to the farm…. Great George rejected

Any THIRD TERM. Does FDR

Want to rule us like some Czar?

Well, you know the vote already –

How it went in Forty-ought –

No need to rely on Neddy

To relay the thing we got:

Four more years of a valiant leader,

History says (to those that heed her,

Of the Democratic strain,

Though to Republicans still a pain),

In peace and war a stubborn ally

Of a proud, embattled isle

(Late, but not too late, our style),

Of stout (!) Churchill the best pal. Cry

Over that – in vain – vile fascist foes,

And drown in your self-inflicted woes!

Enough of that – let’s tell of something

Other of my childhood days.

Politics was not a dumb thing

To me, but it was just a phase

Entered into periodically

To the tune of demagogically

Shouted warning and abuse,

Eloquence sometimes, or abstruse

Argument from leading thinkers,

Along with the lowdown from the press.

The world was always in a mess,

Thanks to its numerous leading stinkers.

But, Willkie buttons stored away,

Ned now turns his mind to play.

And what was play to little Neddy?

Indeed he never learned a sport,

But he had his toys, his Teddy

Bear to hug, and in the fort

(As we’ve seen) his leaden soldiers….

(Jack made his own in melting molders

On the electric kitchen range,

Whence a story sad and strange

Surfaces to haunt these pages,

Hauled forth for a stupid rhyme:

Ned cannot forget the time

He watched Jack through all the stages

Of his metal-casting work…

Cooling lead … the little jerk

Touched it with his curious fingers –

Ouch! The lead had looked so cool!

The pain, a memory that lingers,

Taught him not to be a fool.

That at least was Jack’s intention,

His reason for non-intervention.

“That’s a lesson you should learn –

Surely worth a minor burn” –

Such big-brotherly compassion

To blistered Ned seemed cool enough.

Still, Ned himself admired the stuff

Jack was made of, so no passion

And no sniveling ensued.

Wise up, be a man! A crude

Method to convey wise caution –

Such undoubtedly it was.

Jack forgot this timely notion;

Ned remembered, with just cause.

Decades later Ned alluded

To that day in talk included

In his closest time with Jack.

Jack and he had traveled back

To the lonely desert outpost

Mother lived in toward the last.

Jack and Ned explored the past

There in sorrow at the outmost

Limit of what sons endure –

Guilt, regret, remorse. Be sure,

While we went through Mother’s trailer –

“Mobile Home,” as it was called –

Each knew well he was her jailer

In the “nursing home.” Appalled

By the deed that nothing spared them –

Or her – for nothing had prepared them

To reject a mother’s plea –

And anger, righteous as could be,

Ned wept. Jack gave a brother’s comfort,

Wordless, with a brother’s hand….

Enough…. Another day. Expand

I may perhaps, at least in some sort,

On that summer long ago.

Let us leave this tale of woe

And the question of deserving

Of the pain that one has got –

Not that I intend on swerving

From the task that is my lot –

And get back to Jack my brother,

After we abandoned Mother

In the “Home” and motored off.

Brother to brother, prof to prof,

We prolonged our conversation,

Ambling on down memory lane.

‘Twas then I alluded to the pain

Of my burn, and the consolation

Of new wisdom offered then.

Something passed between two men –

Shock, one pole; one pole forgiveness –

Quick and easy, nothing more;

Not a matter of bland glibness,

But a burn no longer sore.

Jack had totally forgotten;

Ned had not, but nothing rotten

Lingered in his love for Jack.

Jack’s amazement at the lack

Of timidity he fancied

In a Ned grown bold in life,

Able now to handle strife –

Vain hope, and all too much enhancèd

By a brother’s loving eye –

We’ll return to bye and bye.

Anyway, Ned’s frank confessions,

And his openness with Jack,

Brought into that summer’s sessions

A giving neither could take back,

Something they’d remember later

When new pain, not less or greater,

But as real….) In thirty-nine

(Stanza number), reader mine,

I intended play the motive

Of this segment of my verse,

Yet somehow started to rehearse

Tales of pain not quite promotive

To the serious point of play:

Temper ludens, have your day.

Ned played tag, as did the others,

Simplest of all childhood games:

School kids, Hamels, both his brothers –

Boys, all boys, we had no dames

In our neighborhood and playland

(Listen to the things I say, and

Draw your own conclusions here:

Isn’t there something mighty queer?

Girls were sharing all the schooling

Little Ned was sent to get,

Plus the playground, you can bet,

Not to mention golden-ruling –

“Deportment” – where they surely shone,

Setting a far nicer tone

Than uncouth, unruly roughnecks

In shorts and knickers – nasty boys.

Ned, you think, was not so tough – heck,

Sissy maybe, but his joys

Still were of the male variety) –

He could play tag sans satiety

While the girls were jumping rope

(A skill far, far beyond this dope

Who always lacked coordination –

Couldn’t march or dance for shit)

And in tag was always “It.”

(Turns of phrase from naval station

Please excuse, O reader dear –

Diction-wise, alas, I fear

Our erstwhile cultured-diction laureate

Draws from a polluted well;

Corrupted English rates a lariat

Round his scrawny neck to quell

Hand-me-down spurts of terminology

Rank with foetor and scatology

Conned upon the bouncy waves

From the speech of fellow slaves,

Captains of the Head and Mess Deck,

Swabbies drooling for the day

We’d make port…. Your fuckin’ A,

I shit you not…. It was the shipwreck

Of that cultured asshole’s speech,

Something Cranny’d never leach

From his idiom individual

Down the superseding years.

The shit, the fuck, and the residual

Incestuous reference, he fears,

Are his to keep – though very carefully

To be used, when needed, sparefully –

Hard, alas, when out they spout

In one long-repressèd shout:

“Up yours too, of cocks the sucker,

Son of female canine cur

Misconceived (forgive the slur),

You shit-eating motherfucker!”

Middle finger in the air,

Can this be Ned? We turn to stare.

Let us leave that question hanging

And get back to playing tag.)

“Oni,” “Demon,” is the slanging

Way the Japanesers tag

“It” – who chases all the others,

Kids who if they had their druthers

Would escape the Demon’s touch:

Better see than be one – much.

Round they race, this gang of young’uns,

Scattering, giggling (girls?) – sheer fun

In exercise and fear, ‘till one

Gets the tap demonic. Sprung’uns

Spring away from demon child –

The Beast is new, and the game goes wild.

But I trow there was another,

Better loved, game (loved by Ned)

That involved an “It.” Each brother

(Jack and Philip), and the said

Younger Hamels, Dave and Peter

(Foe and friend), on evenings sweeter

To the memory than most,

Evenings ringing with the boast,

“My goal, one-two-three,” like crazy

Raced from hiding, running hard

Across the Hamels’ spacious yard

To beat the Demon that takes the lazy,

And cries, “Pete’s goal one-two-three” –

Or “Ned’s,” or whose it chanced to be

To be the next successive Demon,

Demonized for being slow-

Er than others that came streamin’

In to the goal, their eyes a-glow.

On those eves so damp and dewy,

Each would try to choose the screwy-

Est of places he could hide

While “It,” fast as “It” could, complied

With the rule to count one hundred

One by one (or five by five?).

Somehow we’d by then contrive

To be from Demon eyesight sundered,

Behind the shack or in the wood,

Or in sheds that didn’t smell so good.

Peeking from behind the bushes,

Or the weeds across the hill,

Eyes would gauge the time for rushes

To the barn-door goal where still

“It” was guarding, close and cautious,

Darting forth, intent, ferocious

In its scanning of a scene

Hiding hiders behind the screen

Of dense leaves, or where an old auto,

Rusted hulk with tires flat,

Hinted someone might be at,

Or else inserted in the grotto

Of the house’s cavernous stoop,

Gazing out and ready to swoop

At full speed across the gloaming

Of that shadowed evening time,

Where the “It” might be a-roaming,

Ready to turn round on a dime

And race to the goal, or where the others,

Neighbor kids or Ned’s own brothers,

Might dart out from any side,

Hoping to slap the goal with pride.

Something in the hiding taught him

The benefits of being small,

Hard to find and able to crawl

Low in the grass, lest one who caught him

Say, “Ha! Ha! Ha! You can’t fool me,

‘Cuz I see you there behind the tree!”

Secrecy is not a bad thing,

For all our talk of open lives.

Everyone needs his own quite mad thing,

A place apart, for Life connives

With Time to keep the public peering

Like so many Demons leering,

Or reproving, “No! No! No!

Mustn’t do! I told you so!

Now you’ll catch it from your mother!”

Naughty boys may run and hide;

Mothers, teachers – wives beside –

Fathers, preachers – all that pother –

Find them out in hide-and-seek….

Ah, but the earth is for the meek

To inherit, once was promised

In that Promised Land away –

Another promise less than honest,

Counting how often we betray

The wistful hopes of Milky Toasties,

Toasted indeed by Braggadoasties

Who remember no mistakes….

Things go wrong? That’s just the breaks.

Secrecy (as I was saying

Before I got derailed again),

Good for women and for men

Who tire a bit of daily praying

To be better than they are,

Gives us a world where we can star

[DC says he likes these verses,

Grabs some pleasure from this stuff,

Where the four-beat line rehearses

(Poor old Pushkin made such fluff

Sound like poetry in Russian,

Got ol’ Seth and Doug to crushin’

English verse to ape his line,

And, ape of apes, this time it’s mine)

Mein! Herz (so schwer) mein Leben dunkle

I.e., a.k.a., our Ned,

Little ol’ boy who ain’t quite dead –

Yet – though willing to cry “Uncle!” –

Crieth through this endless crap

Less tuneful than the miller chap

Moaned in Müller’s song that Schubert

(Dear Franz, mein Liebe) made his own

(And mine) about how Love can dó hurt,

Making true lovers grün and groan,

With Death their Wild in blackest forest,

And Angels cut their wings verlorest….

Something DC must have right:

Ned seeks a friend to stay all night

Listening to his idiot story,

An old professor’s anecdote,

Something one would never quote,

Just a vain towazugatóri….

David of the land of snows,

Here cometh wind … see how she blows.]

As the hero of a drama

Of our own concoction, sure,

Hidden from the eyes of Momma,

Deep in tragic folly, pure,

Like the fool in Chikamatsu

Who for love spilled gold – jisatsu

Choosing rather than be wise

And give his gal to the other guy’s

Lustful uses, kept his honor

High above his need for life….

No, he didn’t have a wife

To betray, but Dad’s a goner

Should he save his son from death.

Reader, pause and catch your breath.

Agèd Ned is trying to figure

Where he wants his tale to go.

He’s been off this job, this fixture

In his plan to sow and sow

Seeds of ripe and rank fall harvest,

Grain and tares for thou who starvest

For a meal well laced with sin,

Romance, the scrapes that he was in,

Our author, scrapings from the barrel

Where his memories ferment,

Fact and fiction subtly blent….

Grace abounding, Christmas carol –

Yes, the vat contains those too:

Life is long, the more’s to rue.

To rue, to rue … the years go lamely,

By and by, and what’s to do?

Grab the nettle, grab it gamely,

The stinking leek, the false and true….

The rose by any name as sweetly

Burnt perfumes, old songs that featly

Fall upon the ravished ear….

Among the things that Ned held dear:

Cats and dogs, blueberry patches,

A friend, a book, the farm itself.

Nothing here is writ for pelf,

Rhyme’s the guide, the net that catches

Golden glints (fool’s gold?) and dross

In one scoop – yes, rhyme’s the boss.

“Bossie, Bossie,” herds of Holsteins,

As I earlier have sung,

Jerseys, Guernseys, all that green things

Used to graze, prehensile tongue

Plucking from our rolling meadows

(Gone now, leaving only shadows

In the mind of the hills of home)

Sustenance from out the loam,

Alfalfa turned by rumination

To sweet milk, our simple fare

And our living, bottled with care,

Delivered as their daily ration

To our customers in town.

Fill your glasses, drink it down,

Drink your health, or so we thought it,

Prideful of our cream-line low,

Sure of mind that those who bought it

Bought well-being, bought the glow

Only farm-fresh healthy cattle

Give to fend off the sickly rattle

Afflicting poor ill-nourished folk

Weaned on beer, and that’s no joke,

Folk that turn their kids to drunkards

(Booze the worst of social ills,

Gateway to disease that kills)….

Milk and cream and eggs our trump cards

In the battle for good health –

An income drawn from nature’s wealth.

Once we had a frisky collie –

“Mitzie” was this canine’s name.

A dog can keep a family jolly,

Being as it were the same

As a happier, hairier member

Of the clan. But thunder’d send her

Cowering beneath the couch

(And she’d bite – for that I’ll vouch –

If a careless child should happen

Lightly on her toe to tread –

And oft that careless child was Ned…),

For Mitzie was high-strung – her snapping

Was a case of nerves like mine:

“Don’t tread on me!” will do just fine

As the motto of us critters

Angry at the alien tread,

Wont to suffer from the jitters

When folks mess around, instead

Of, content to stroke our noggins,

Letting us run free, each dog in’s

Own day to find out the path

Whereby to escape the wrath

Of a master or a mistress,

Mother, brother, or a dad.

What is good, and what is bad,

What most likely to cause dístress

Is an art we master soon,

Wag our tails and lick the spoon.

Once our valiant Mitzie collie

Saved me from the horns of kine,

A fate surely less than jolly,

Had that pointed end been mine.

As I’ve told in this long ramble

Through farm days, our cows would shamble

To their summer pastures down

Early morns, then back to crown

In our barn at evening milking

The long labor of our day

With the gift supreme these hay-

Eaters offer, never sulking:

“Contented cows,” our truck proclaimed.

Riverdale Farm, for so ‘twas named,

Of acres one hundred forty-seven,

That spread of pasture, field, and stream,

The hills of home, the rural heaven

Little Ned did once esteem

Far above the dinky places

City kids and such scapegraces

Had to live in, street by street:

For us the sky, the land, were sweet.

Riverdale’s contented cattle –

The tale I’m trying still to tell,

Distracted by the barnyard spell,

And smell, and sounds, to pointless prattle –

Pail on pail of sweet milk gave,

Warm with froth, the farmer’s rave.

And of that milk… I needs must wander

Down another branching lane,

The anecdotal path where maunder

Spares the student needless pain

Of midnight prepping on the grammar

Lesson, since the prof will stammer

Yet another “Oh, yes, now

I remember…” tale of how

In his student days he learned what

Wartime textbooks tersely taught –

Names of guns and ranks, the lot –

And how back then you surely earned what-

Ever grades above C+

You got from profs who don’t discuss

Ways to make the learning easy,

Since no doubt they never had

Happy classes, thus were queasy

At the notion making glad

Laughter ripple through the classroom,

Though it give the class wise-ass room

To wise off more than he should,

Still accomplishes much good

For the project educational,

Laughs and grammar brought apace

To serendipitous embrace,

Making a marriage quite sensational,

The Joy of Wordlock, sexy text,

Our vade mecum for the next

Sixty or so years of study

Of the ways of rhyme and life

Being the offspring, ripe and ruddy,

Of that laughter, primal, rife

With a knowledge that together

Knotty rules and smiling weather

Conjugate and coexist….

A parting thought…. I don’t insist.

The tale I was about to nárrate

Anent the collie, kine, and Ned,

Can you believe? – We’ll soon be dead –

Must wait a bit, until I dílate

On the milk and Neddy boy,

The boy that found it such a joy

Out to cow barn to betake him,

Cup in hand, just at the time

Machine-milking left to slake him

Hand-squeezed bounty, fresh and fine,

From the yet-unemptied udder –

City folks might gag and shudder –

Left to “strip” – such was the term –

By the hand both skilled and firm

Of a friendly man we hired

Farm work to perform for pay

(Milking is not children’s play)

In Ned’s held-out cup desired

Streams of foamy fluid shot,

Zing-zíng – that udder held a lot

Of the stuff that calves are weaned on,

And one cow-boy loved it well.

Cup to lip, that liquid streamed on

Down a gullet, truth to tell,

Finicky, prone to multiple phobias,

Diet-wise plagued with many myopias,

Loathing báked beans, sauerkraut

(That stench!), anything about

To be drenched in salad dressing,

Pickles, peas, and old canned beets,

Liver and all stinky meats,

Fried or scrambled eggs, but blessing

Mother’s fragrant leg of lamb,

Mint jelly, turkey, sometimes ham,

Always bacon, fried and crispy,

Róast beef, béef stew, corn on cob,

Pancakes, popcorn … well the list he

Could compile goes on, a job

‘Twere to get through like and hatred,

For sated ne’er and ever sacred

Is that childhood appetite

For the thing that tastes just right….

And for Ned the warmth of frésh milk,

Fragrant ambrosia of cow,

Made a drink no matter how

Later processed, strained through mésh, silk-

Y-smooth and pasteurized,

Safe and bottled, could be prized

As anywhere as near as perfect

As that guzzle warm from cow,

The yet-uncooked, the very ur-smecked

Smack of nature did allow

One small boy to know unaltered

Before grown-up rules had haltered,

Laws defined, the do and don’t….

Rules that say, “Don’t smoke – you won’t

Grow up tall, but stop all stunted,”

Have a point, so rules are fine,

But somewhere one must draw the line

‘Twixt vicious habit, nature blunted,

And nature robbed of all its wild,
Clover-sweet gifts to nature’s child.

Now, as to that tale of Ned and collie

(Remember sonnet 64?),

This poem stumbles on, the folly

Of setting story to a score

In its basics musicálly

Conceived – oh, count, oh, keep the tally

Of the divagations you,

Dear Reader, have to suffer through –

Surely is by now apparent:

Rhyme is master, poet slave,

He can’t refrain, his soul to save,

From toeing line, or at least he daren’t:

Old Cole Porter: “Don’t complain …

Explain….” Ol’ Ned jess can’t Refrain.

Explain? Refrain? Indeed refrain ‘tis

Of this Pushkinotic pome;

All I’ll say now is that, gée whiz,

Till the cows come ambling home,

Or till the potty poet plunks it,

Or gives the whole thing up and junks it,

Excursuses you should expect.

Poem and poet may be wrecked,

But the thing, like Old Man River

Before its dammed and leveed days,

Rolls on, a mud-flood nothing stays,

Its curlicues in fact the giver

In their parenthetic shape

Of what wisdom this ape’s ape

Dredges from his scummy bucket.

What, then, did Mitzie do for Ned?

Well, the truth is – you can’t duck it –

Cows are brutes, howe’er well fed.

In a herd they’re prone to panic;

Contented? Ha! Stampede’s a manic

Synapse in the bovine brain.

Something spooks them, and a train

Bearing down with whistles blasting

Is no scarier than hooves

Thundering down the idiot grooves

Freaked-out eyes must see as lasting

Till somehow the spell is broke.

Being in their path’s no joke.

Mitzie hastened to my rescue,

As I fancy I recall,

Racing in among the fescue

(Or what grasses short or tall

May have sprouted in our meadows

Winding homeward from the shadows

Darkening the riverbank

Where the Housatonic stank,

Dank and putrid with pollution

From the paper mills upstream,

Oozing like an evil dream,

Lifeless, hopeless convolution

Of effluent swirling slow,

Stygian stream too thick to flow).

Well, so much about the river –

The first one that I ever knew –

Not of purling joy the giver,

Just a foul industrial stew.

Still, the bottom lands were fertile,

More so than the cow-pathed kirtle

Of the hills now bulldozed flat.

Now, let’s see where I was at….

Ah, yes, the cows were coming at me

In that valley-land now gone –

Why? My memory’s off-and-on

Switch keeps switching tit-for-tatly

Onto “off” when tale I’d tell.

All I see is a dog pell-mell

Frisking in among the cattle,

Heading off their nervous charge,

Scattering in darting battle

Thudding hooves along the marge

Where the hill and valley mingle,

Barking, turning, till no single

Cow had anything to say

But let’s go home and eat our hay.

This adventure, if there was one,

Was a tale I told in school

Later (much), no, not to fool,

Though I said I’d lived because one

Day my dog…. Well, at a stretch

Some bone of truth is there to fetch.

Mitzie did not live forever –

Her obsequies a murky tale

Told in secret…. Ned, who never

Knew the truth, but as a pale

Simulacrum of what happened,

Brother-whispered, had to wrap in

Silence news that was a shock:

Mummy killed our collie dog.

Somewhere on October Mountain

Buried was our faithful pet.

“Put to sleep?” No doubt, and yet,

When? And why? With little certain,

We learned the law of nothing said:

Some things don’t ask. The dog was dead.

[To be avec but bitter lonely

All the much-bescolded night,

Lying as the last and only

Listener to the whining might

Of an everlasting tirade

Fusillading like a sky-raid

Evils great and slip-ups small,

None forgotten, each and all

Equally to be berated –

Customs, manners, politics,

City slickers, country hicks,

Roving eyes and much belated

Husbands dawdling down the lane –

Is to lie in sleepless pain.]

Let me think of something better –

Some fine mem’ry to relate….

Ere we left the farm a setter,

English breed … Alas, its fate

Was to die while yet a puppy,

Hit by a car, a Hamel jalopy.

Harry’s Chevy, cruising fast,

Struck poor Sarge, his carcass cast

On the roadside. Little fellow,

How we grieved…. We buried him

In the garden, neat and trim

In a cardboard box. It doesn’t follow

That we hated Harry H.

Reckless Harry didn’t watch

Where he drove, that summer twilight –

Just a teenage kid, you know –

Kind of shocked himself, to dó right

Paid ten dollars. We let it go

At that…. That’s all I can remember,

Now well on in the December

Of a year near seventy on.

Harry left, and Sarge was gone.

Sarge, though, was a pedigreed bird dog –

Was his price a mere ten bucks?

Jack would know, no doubt, but luck’s

Out on that score too…. A third dog,

Also Jack’s, soon took the place

Of the pup that ran but lost the race.

But ere I tell of Sarge’s brother –

“Sergeant Trigger” was his name –

Whose long life I now would rather

Leave until another time,

Let me chose a different topic.

Winds of winter, far from tropic,

Drifted snow across our land

Deeper than a child would stand,

Making hills a child can hollow

Into forts with ammo round,

Artillery with which to pound

Rival gangs in games that follow

Hard on every blizzard storm:

Throwing snowballs keeps you warm.

One thing for sure Ned loved in winter –

His Flexible Flyer on to get,

Skittering down like a flying splinter

Hills of home (now bulldozed flat).

Ned with neighbor kids went swooping

Full-speed downhill, prone, then looping

Back to climb the hill again,

Slide again, again…. And then

Home to supper in the twilight,

Pulling his sled behind him went

A satisfied boy, his energy spent

In play that memory claims the highlight

Of winter days back on the farm,

Days when he never came to harm,

Though danger lurked within that playtime….

Dave and Peter, the Hamel boys,

With Ned made three…. The winter daytime,

Short, was long enough for joys

More reckless. Up October Mountain

Wound a road through trees past counting,

Rough, unpaved, past glacial rocks

Twisting, dipping, rich with shocks

For unskillful little sledders.

Up we went, all three, our sleds

Pulled behind, the platform beds

Whereon to lie and brave the shudders

Of our perilous descent.

“Let’s go!” we cried, and off we went.

Downhill we plunged, with desperate steering

Avoiding rocks and dodging trees,

Whipping around, exultant, fearing

Nothing now, face to the breeze,

Feeling the ground give way beneath us –

Whee! A dip! We flew – oh, Jesus!

Nearly hit that rock! The blur

Of forest trees as thick as fur

Walled in the track where we went racing

For all our lives in derring-do.

Broken bones, cracked skulls – we knew

Such were the chances we were facing.

But for young boys of ten or less

Fun wins over fear, I guess.

Fear’s a factor in this story

We’ve met before, and will again.

Ghosts and tales both grim and gory –

Fear imagined by the pen

Of some odd writer of a novel

Or short story, scrape of shovel

Digging somewhere on the grounds

Of Wuthering Abbey, or weird sounds

In the walls that start to gibber

Around midnight – all the stuff

Austen mocks – were quite enough

To make young Neddy begin to shiver.

Fear imagined, fear unknown…

Fear, perhaps, never outgrown….

Fear in the mind, fear in the body…

These are not the same, not quite.

From young shaver to old shoddy,

Few have shed our old birthright.

Fear…. Receptive, weak and passive,

Nightmare-haunted, helpless…. Massive

Evil overpowers us.

Unheimlich…. F. & J. discuss

How such things affect us humans,

Poe evokes them, and H. James

Turns the Screw…. One knows the names –

Bronte’s Heathcliff too, the drue fen’s

Monster … Ishiguro’s Unconsoled –

Psycho tales and Gothic mold.

But there’s another type of panic –

Graves on war discusses that –

Not panic, really, but the manic

Bravado suddenly knocked flat

By a fusillade of bullets.

Fusiliers must leave trench-billets –

Up and over, “Stand to! Stand to!” –

Knowing well what there’s to do:

Face in idiot war an army

Just as idiot as theirs.

Routine orders quell their fears –

Death is normal, what alarm he

Normally felt, the fusilier

Masks with pride and bitter cheer.

Bitter, cruel revenge envisioned…

There’s a tale from Jeffers here –

Tooth of deadly snake incisioned

In an arm thrust in its lair

(“That’s where I hid the whiskey bottle”)…

Screams constricting throat can’t throttle,

Brutal male seducer caught

By his prey, orgasm sought

A writhing now, a dance with a lover

Without legs, a fling with the beast

Of ardent connection, a wild love-feast

The woman watches, to discover

Work of venom, work of fear

Take the mind, the body tear.

Back to Neddy – tell us, poet,

What does Neddy really fear?

You are him – or he – you know it

From inside, and mighty queer

If you don’t, the tale you’re telling…

Let the memories go on welling

From that well so dank and deep….

Miles to go before you sleep?

Ah, but you’re asleep already,

Half the time, old mole. Bad dreams,

Stark terror, rigid fright, the screams

That can’t be screamed, the legs unsteady,

Stifled breath, the gloating laugh

Of something evil, the leering half

Of some innocent smile, deception

Cruel … enjoyment of the pain

The helpless suffer, the grim inception

Of infection in the brain

From lovely lust, the sweet desiring

Turned to shame, the deeper miring

With each step into the muck

Wherein you’re lost, the sound of the suck

Pulling you down, the bog enclosing

Upward straining nostrils now

Inhaling filth…. Should I allow

Nightmare to be muse, or interposing

My own will, cut off this tale

Of fancied horrors beyond the Pale?

After years of weekly sessions

I was allowed to take the couch,

There to continue my confessions,

Supinely letting them debouch

As they would, however filthy,

Nasty, secretive and stealthy

Those imaginings might be –

Bring them out where we can see

Was the notion underlying

This analysis, I knew.

A dark time, more I could not do

Than three months. A voice was crying

In me against this waste of shame –

Expense of spirit – not my game.

In those months the subway tunnel

Seemed an underground in hell,

A haunted, grim, and murky funnel

Which to enter cast a spell

Somber over all the faces,

All the bodies in their places

Floating down that River Styx

Where the dead and living mix,

And none can separate the breathing

From the still and wordless freight,

Strap-hangers there that hang dead-weight,

Readers all intent on reading

The one page they never turn…

Here’s a lesson to unlearn,

Here’s a vision to escape from,

Here’s a dread to overcome –

The desperate screaming in the rape room

Speaks to what? Aye, what’s the sum?

The sum of all the things that haunt us,

The grand display of fears that daunt us –

Orwellian science, helpless man

Let him parse who parse them can.

As for me, I search for Neddy,

Who never tried a thing so bad,

A fraidy cat but not a cad,

A little party, nerves unsteady,

Whose social fears have kept him shy,

Easily shamed, afraid to cry.

Neddy’d wake on Christmas morning,

Wake with brothers Phil and Jack,

All three wake to find adorning

Tinsel-burdened boughs no lack

Of the wrappings children dream on

As the time draws near – the gleam on

Baubles caught in colored lights,

The last vision on those nights

Before they rise to find their stockings

Dangling in a heavy row –

Stockings stuffed and hanging low:

Santa stuffs them while tick-tockings

Of the midnight clock keep pace –

Toys and candy, each in place,

Bags of marbles, little treasures,

Gews and gaws topped off above

By the sign that all our pleasures

Stemmed from a maternal love –

Winter oranges, round and glowing,

Corked each bulging sock, thus showing

Health was on the giver’s mind,

Countering candy canes that lined

Spaces in between our booty:

Wicked sugar, bad for teeth,

Versus vitamin relief –

Florida citrus pealed its beauty

Like a bell on Christmas morn

To celebrate the Christ child born.

Now the scene shifts, gentle reader,

To that famous night before.

Father’s farm, our family’s feeder,

Had a wealth of straw in store,

No doubt for cows, but also matching

An ideal of rustic thatching

For a lodging that for long

Has appeared in Christmas song:

Wood and cardboard, a home-made stable,

Peopled among sheep and kine

By shepherds hardly over-fine,

And the Wise Men…. On our table

Resting in the manger hay

Lay the Child. They came to pray,

Men and angels, at the crib-side

By the holy family framed,

With beasts of burden, all the riptide

Of full Christian faith has named

In its legends of the Borning,

Silent, waiting for the morning,

While about the Child a light

Shed its glory through the night….

Friends, the secret of that shining

Was best known to little Ned –

A flashlight used to read in bed,

Now (device of rare designing)

Made a miracle through a door

Cut in the stable attic’s floor.

On that Night, the guests assembled,

Ned was asked to speak the lines,

The verses from St. Luke … He trembled,

Standing by the glowing signs

Of the holy moment’s magic,

Text well conned, no hint of tragic

End of either speech or tale,

He spoke on and did not fail.

“And there were in the same country

Shepherds….” Yes, the words came back,

“Fear not, for unto you….” No lack

Of confidence now … “Is born…” Wonderfully,

The words, the words … “They came and found…”

An angel’s promise in native ground.

100

Neddy’s annual contribution

To those festive days and nights,

Solemn, caused no diminution

Of the savoury delights

All awaited: Christmas dinner

Was their crown. Few rose up thinner

From our mother’s turkey feast.

White meat? Dark meat? Never ceased

To be asked, these ritual questions

In the etiquette of the day.

Everyone could have his say:

Drumstick? Wishbone? Some suggestions

For more stuffing might be heard,

Or judiciously preferred

101

Garnishes of mint or berry,

Or, our just desserts, the pie!

Mother saw to all, and very

Busy indeed was she, say I.

How her hands acquired the skill I

Never knew, but she could, still I

Say, cook! Not sew – Grandma did that –

But make good fare, not fat or flat –

The roasts, the fowl, the pies, the junkets,

The cakes that Mr. B. adored,

The bacon crisp, the veggies stored

Down cellar ‘gainst when mercury plummets –

All her doing…. She popped the corn,

Made the root beer…. Christmas morn

102

Must have found her in the kitchen,

After our stockings had disgorged

All their wealth, a merry midden;

Mistress of oven, she, she forged,

Innards out and outwards in it,

From a bird a feast no sin it

Seemed to us to carve and eat,

A sacrifice of festal meat.

Breast of white flesh, moist and tender,

Under brown and crackling skin,

Drumstick thighs more plump than thin…

Creative cooking let one render

Succulent too the absent part

With bread crumbs, spice, and rice – an art.

103

Memory tells, unless it falters

(As it may – it’s fading fast,

And little enough that nothing alters

In recountings of the past),

Christmas guests included Henry,

Our November host, for thén we

(See verse 5) dined at his farm,

And Aunt Alma was the warm

Hostess of the turkey dinner,

Now with Uncle Henry come

To dine with us – in short, in sum,

Exchange has always been a winner

In the ways of family lore –

Even-Steven, if nothing more.

104

Uncle Henry, tall and balding,

Had the “Cranston Nose” – the Rose

Nose it truly was, no faulting

Of the Cranston clan arose

From the line of Grandpa C., who,

Short and stocky (and bearded), was he who

Married the willowy beauty Rose –

Grace Rose – who … Let’s here impose

A “Peace! Have done!” on genealogical

Inquiry re DNA, blood-lines,

At least for the nonce. Else all the signs

Point toward a detour narratological

Longer than the very Nose,

Whose origins we shall disclose

105

No more (for now). He died at ninety,

This uncle of the resonant voice
So deeply baritone and mighty

(Just slightly nasal), a man whose choice

To smoke made him the great exception

To our household’s firm rejection

Of tobacco, sin, and booze.

Liquor and bad language lose

Their appeal, their power over

Uncorrupted, healthy souls

When kept out. Primary goals

Of good Christian homes, moreover,

So our parents must have thought,

Were to raise up children taught

106

To be clean in mind and body,

Whence avoidance of the bad

(In moral terms) damns too the shoddy,

Harmful substances (how sad

That millions should enjoy it só much,

The wretched weed, of trash the nónesuch…).

But Uncle Henry came and smoked,

Spoke his mind, and even joked,

As our guest at Christmas dinner,

While the aroma of his cigar

Made redolent the very air,

Wafting from a man no sinner

As far as we knew, and surely so –

Churched and Republican as they go.

107

God knows how much of th’above’s conflated

From memories of sundry times;

No matter, let’s let the tale unabated

Flow on…. A curse on all these rhymes,

But, in for a dollar, in for a dumpling,

Pat on the bottom, tousled and rumpling,

The boys had their milk, no caffeine for them,

But we were no Mormons, ahem and ahem,

The grownups drank coffee, I reckon they must have,

Or maybe, just maybe, had cuppas of tea.

Or how about cider? I just couldn’t say

[Bad rhyme? Shall we fix it?] I just cannot see

What sin’s in the apple, though Eve and her lúst have

Given a bite to its juice that flows free

From the little brown jug to the you and the me

108

Of the little old song “How I Love Thée.” (Oh,

What shall we do with these rhythms so sprung,

Where iambs and anapests drown in a sea-o

Of prosody slop like infection of lung

That Old Ned now spits up with each breath that he’s taking

Or mouthful he swallows, or wind that he’s breaking?)

More to the point, whatever we had

To drink, for sure ‘twas nothing bad.

And slightly alcoholic punchbowls

Had no role in the season’s cheer.

Liquors have no entrance here.

The door is barred. We’d rather múnch rolls

Sweet with home-made butter, or pie …

We ran no risk of getting high

109

Like those aunties Dylan tells of

In his Christmases in Wales,

Ringing once a year the bells of

Sentiment in tender tales

Of romances never fúlfilled

In their cups of spicy wéll-mulled

Wine that call the fancy back….

Ah, no, they sigh, Alas! Alack!

Now I am old, and none will have me,

But I think of other Yules

When my bosom glittered jewels, [bad rhyme]

And the courting fellows gave me

Looks and lyrics all a-shine,

Those long nights of Christmas time….

110

No, our family celebration

Was a tamer show than that;

We had only the one relation

Who even smoked, and none who sat

Drinking úntil, getting tipsy,

They began to sing a gipsy

Song or two from wilder days,

Those times of Rutherford Birchard Hayes.

No, there was no laced-up eggnog,

Potent though of innocent look,

Or even taste, until you shook

A leg and cut a rug to jíg-jog,

Only to discover where

Wall and ceiling met the floor.

111

Christmas Day, the dinner finished,

Came the time to unburden the Tree.

The fascination never diminished

Through the years of what they could be,

For whom, from whom, those gifts so gaily

Wrapped, a secret process daily,

Nightly, done, as time allows,

Secreted now among the boughs,

Or piled, if large around the tree trunk…

One night, years later, I lay alone –

It was in our desert home,

A continent away … but, sée, sunk,

Roots in alien earth, the thing

I saw rise silent … lights that sing

112

Inaudible a murmuring carol

In red and green, the colors of life,

In coolest blue, a queen’s apparel,

And crowning fragrant branches rife

With tinsel glitter, white light, the emblem

Of a quest for holy wisdom

That beckoned beyond horizons far

Three seekers from the East, the Star.

Bathed in the aura of that moment,

Sacred night of all the year,

Secure in warmth and safe from fear,

I knew the Tree and its adornment –

The boy Néd knéw – were heárt’s hóme,

Wherever one day he might roam.

113

And what of death? When did you learn it

Is a thing that will not wait

Forever, however you twist it, turn it

Into something grand, like “Fate”?

The ghost stories you and brother

On those summer nights would smother

All your fears withal in brave

Calling up from out the grave

Gibbering things to make us quiver

In an ecstasy of fright,

In sheer terror finding delight,

Hugging the chill that makes us shiver,

Were and are the games we play

To while away the hours till day….

114

A scéne – what wás it? I don’t remémber –

On the way to Grandma’s house,

On a school day in – say – November,

Nibbles like a hungry mouse

(“Scenes” can “nibble”?? Metaphórical

Nonsense! Cries the voice rhetorical

Always censoring this stuff,

Spying on me, calling my bluff),

Nibbles at the edge of reason,

Of a hole súnk in the ground.

In the hole a man is found,

Dead. Dead? What’s “dead”? Séize on

Meaning of a word he’d heard… Said Ned,

“He doesn’t move – I think he’s dead.”

115

Well, the grownups didn’t puzzle

Long about Ned’s strange “mistake”

(He guesses), but set about to hustle

Toward topics better for his sake

Than all-too-premature mortality,

Sudden death, irrationality,

“Seeing things” that aren’t there

(Children may look, but mustn’t stare…)

And so the memory (?) is mysterious,

Lunch was set, no more was said,

The man either was, or wasn’t, dead.

Childhood fantasy, hardly serious….

But Ned knew that Grandpa in fact had died –

Death was real, no one denied

116

That. But still, the thing we bury

When the time has come we must

Was a thing that they were chary

Of revealing, “dust to dust”

Being a convenient scripture

To disguise the horrid rupture

Supervening when our breath

Ceases in the clutch of death.

Cows dead and bloated, slaughtered chickens

Ned had seen, but no one spoke

Of dead people. “Turned to smoke”?

Not our culture. Something sickens

In the mind – Poe knew it well –

Imagining the dreadful smell

117

Of the deliquescing tissues

Making up a well-loved face,

The foul liquid mess that issues

From the bloated belly space,

The strange colors, black and grisly

As a crypt all dank and drizzly,

Sticky with some dreadful glue,

Dense with stench as thick as stew –

Not a scene one wants to witness

Or to read too much about….

What was that? A scream? A shout

Scaring normal people witless

As the sheeted ghost appears

From the dank tarn of our fears….

118

Poe lay still in Nedling’s future –

Images so ghastly-gross –

Morbid’s the word – as to de-suture –

Unzip – the seams that, squamulose,

The scaly demon wriggles úp to,

Claws at, all intent from tóp to

Bottom to tear, to rend the shield

Thin, so thin, wherein’s revealed

The pit of fear, the root of terror,

Homunculus with dreadful eyes,

The thing of death, the worm whose size,

So tiny, yet inspires horror….

Images of dream are these –

I’ll try no more your blood to freeze.

119

Rather, let me speak of Grandma,

How Ned saw her kindly face,

Showing, as ever, no hint of drama,

Peau-de-soie without a trace

Of the ravages she suffered

We can only guess were buffered

Somehow – morphine? – when she lay

All those months, day after day,

In the bedroom strict forbidden

To the grandchild – Ned, for sure –

Where the thing without a cure

Went its course, remote and hidden…

Stomach cancer was the ill

That gnawed her till her heart lay still.

120

She was lying in her coffin,

Grandma dear, so sweet and fine,

Faintly rouged, as if to soften

Even more each kindly line

In the beaming face remembered

By a boy who now seemed tendered

A last chance to kiss her cheek,

But who did not. Silent, meek,

Sidelong glances showed the others

Standing quite as still as he.

Goodbye, Grandma. Ned could see

Dignity at work – respect that smothers

The wild cries of shameless grief,

The acting-out that brings relief

121

To the vulgar lesser classes –

Immigrants and all that lot –

(At Irish wakes, one reads, the asses

Dance the corpse around, about.)

To be “lifelike” in the casket –

Mourners didn’t need to ask it –

Triumph of mortician’s art

Once achieved, our only part

As spectators was to spectate,

Murmur softly or be still,

With a grief that need not spill.

Nothing in our code would dictate

More than a quite seemly tear.

Boredom was the thing to fear.

122

The year, that year, began quite badly –

Winter of more than discontent –

News was bleak, a war that, sadly,

Now was ours was on, blood spent

In distant islands filled the airwaves,

Battles lost, ships sunk, the blare-raves

Of the siren’s shrill we heard,

For air raid drills were not absurd,

So our leaders did instruct us.

Metal scrap and paper too –

Collecting was the thing to do…

Draft boards ready to induct us

Kept the Army growing fast.

The “war effort,” first to last,

123

Made us feel we all were fighters,

Ready to pound the Japs to pulp,

Help the Brits resist the blighters

Swallowing Europe in one gulp,

Naasty Nazis, hordes of fiendish

Torturers let loose, a mean dish

Our brave Yanks were forced to eat

Once surrounded in retreat,

Marched away and bayoneted

When they faltered on the way…

How we swore to make them pay,

Those cruel foes, once we had netted

The final score of blood and pain.

Those days of hatred left a stain

124

Seemingly quite unforgettable

In the minds of almost all –

Hatred not in the least regrettable

Once we harkened to the call

Answering that Day of Infamy

Valiantly to fight for Liberty,

Sink the foe or shoot him down –

Midway Battle was the crown

Of our Navy pilots’ know-how,

The first engagement that we won

And put the enemy on the run –

The first chance too for us to show how

We could match the RAF,

Those cool Brits, in Righteous Stuff,

125

As plane by plane the dreaded Zero

Zeroed out into the drink….

Later, much, “Of Young Men Hero”

Made, or makes, a curious link

Betwixt the War and what I’m wearing

On odd days beyond all caring

Whether the thing is too absurd…

Here it is then, word for word –

Or close as meter lets me do it –

“Old Aircraft of the World” – how flat,

Unprofitable a phrase is that …

“Of Young Men Hero”… Men who flew it,

Or them, above the ocean wave

That day, the live, the dead, the brave

126

Of both sides, have found at Midway

Upon my back this strange device –

A pullover shirt that says, or díd say,

Last I checked, in formula nice

In intent, if not in syntax,

What may bring us down to tin tacks

As the passions fade away….

Youth and Commerce have their day.

There was thought control and scheming,

Battle cry and brutal rape,

Cities in flame with no escape….

All the while sweet Peace was dreaming,

As some poet might have said,

Some quiet world beyond the dead.

[Excursus on the passing of Bill Burto]

Turn away from all the sorrow,

Comfort in the friendship find…

Counsel for some far tomorrow,

Words intended to be kind….

When such loss is new and aching

Human hearts come close to breaking,

And there’s little one can do,

Searching for a word that’s true,

But acknowledge that the grieving

For so sweet and gentle a friend

Helps the aching heart to mend.

Lest some ache beyond conceiving

Settle over a blighted heart,

Accept sorrow for your part.

[After watching the opera Silent Night]

Now the night again approaches

When that strange event occurred…

An astonishment encroaches,

And the logical mind grows blurred…

Frame it with the mythic mana

Of a tale from the Pax Romana,

Date it to nineteen fourteen,

Read the text, enact the scene…

Something rises from the pages

Not to be explained away,

A strange silence, then the play,

Voice on voice, on all the stages,

Inn and trench and battlefield:

A moment’s truce in song is sealed.

127

He who dreamt to make a poem

Capture of that world of peace

Scenes that after lengthy proem

Find some trick to give release

To the latent sense of living

In the past, a frame for giving

New life to the times he knew –

Times of pleasures not a few,

And of sorrows, disappointments,

Memories that make him cringe –

Loss of innocence, drunken binge –

Pains for which there are no ointments –

Plods again the Proustian path,

Pushkin perhaps, but hardly Plath.

128

There’s a photo on my bookshelf

Black and white that’s just begun

Edgewise curl that has the lóok self-

Destruction may one day outrun

Tardy conservation measures.

Shame on him who little treasures

A ninety-year-old gem like this…

Take a look, you cannot miss

Amid the crowd that’s here assembled

What the scene is all about:

“Wedding Day!” it seems to shout.

Dignity no whit dissembled,

But asserted, rather states,

Firmly, Family here creates.

129

Backdrop: looming house veranda,

Portico of an upstairs room,

Slant of roof … the substance ánd a

Sense of a time that’s come to bloom.

Rank on rank adults are standing,

Front row, next row, rear on the landing:

Men – I count them twenty-three;

Women – full thirty-one I see.

Down in front on the grass are seated

Boys and girls both large and small,

Four of each, and you’ve got it all –

All, but the scene is not completed

Without we focus on the bride,

The groom, and four more guests beside.

130

In the front, this seated grouping:

From the left, a long-nosed pair –
Brothers, clearly – neither stooping

To crack a smile, their serious air

Implying perhaps an inner tension

(Or is that merely my invention?),

Hands in lap, they face the day.

Trousers white, dark jackets say

These necktied gents belong together:

Best Man, Bridegroom: Edwin A.,

Julius B. have played the play

That ties the immemorial tether –

The play that this mob has come to see:

Maple Leaf weds Land of the Free.

131

There she sits in all her glory,

Dressed in white, coif-veil behind,

Holding roses – four plus móre, he

Thinks who counts what he can find.

With eager face, lips slightly parted,

Ruth née Pepin had but started

On a smile held in restraint

When the shutter clicked. No taint

Of giggling girlhood here: Decisive,

Strong, intelligent, this face:

“Handsome, mature” usurp the place,

Perhaps, of “lovely.” Yet, divisive

Distinctions should be laid aside:

Handsome and strong, this lovely bride.

132

Who’s this seated next beside her –

To her left, the viewer’s right –

Smiling, charming… Who denied her

“Pretty” would be wrong – in white,

She too, with roses…? Bridesmaid, surely…

But her name? Alas, demurely

Beaming from the past, this face,

Despite its obvious pride of place,

Must go nameless for the moment.

Whom to ask, of all this crowd?

Few, I think, have been allowed

To survive to quell or fóment

Further speculation now:

This gang of ghosts? I don’t see how.

133

Next is a lady prim of visage,

Dressed in black, quite dignified,

Hands in lap, the very image

Of a past that has survived

From early in the previous century

And a voyage one might guess adventury –

Sarah Edmonds as she was:

Born in Ireland, came across,

Why or when, beyond my saying.

Slip of a girl? Perhaps ‘twas so…

So many things I cannot know.

She came to stay, and still was staying

In June of nineteen twenty-five –

Mid-eighties, strong, and quite alive.

134

Of the bride she was the grandma

Most beloved, so I’ve been told.

Runnells, George, my mother’s grandpa,

Irish too, the facts unfold,

Married Sarah one year after

Lincoln died, and all the laughter

At Ford’s theater that night

Stopped. Research may cast some light

Why and when they left for Canada,

This Runnells-Edmonds married pair,

Lacking which I hardly dare

Do more than guess they had a plán and a

Reason too that sent them north.

Ah, well, the answer may come forth,

135

Or not… But still, there’s more worth telling

About Sarah and her earlier life.

An archive rich in deviant spelling,

Letters from fraternal strife –

Battlefield reports of the dying

And the dead, the corpses lying

Strewn as silent bedmates till,

Come morning, Why are they so still…? –

Has come to hand, a family treasure.

“Dear Sister Sarah,” these letters start.

“i suppose you have heard…” The words impart

A brother’s witness to the measure

Of one battle’s cost in lives:

Pitsburg Landing: the letter contrives

136

To bring the rain, the mud, the slogging,

Exhaustion, distant cannons’ roar,

“Humane buchery” befogging

A mind that seeks a word for war….

“i have seen what the call battles…”

But not this. Mere reason rattles

At six miles all thick with dead –

“A dreadful site,” the letter said.

What did Sarah think on reading

Letters brother William sent?

Were they close? His letters went

To her only, glad or pleading

For her news… Replies are lost.

Where was “home”? How dear the cost...

[hors du série]

What the cost indeed when wifey

Spreads your ev’ry foible wide:

Car keys are so very pricey…

Stranded, left to stand outside…

So the story goes – I con it

Ever and anon… What sonnet

Can alleviate this peeve?

Pushkin, help me to reprieve

The quick wit two aged brothers

Had when they were young and bright…

Keys in hand, held very tight….

So ‘twould be, had they their druthers –

Who would choose to cause such rage?

Alas! Alack! Let’s turn this page….

137

This Sarah, prim-faced in the photo,

One may guess, may well have thought,

Was the war worthwhile in toto,

Was the Cause too dearly bought?

Sister Sarah never tells us

If the slaughter that repels us

Seemed a noble enterprise.

Some no doubt thought otherwise.

Men will die, and women weeping

Keep the letters that they write.

Men will live in death’s despite –

Treasured lives in women’s keeping.

William, though, survived the war –

Went west… Of him there’s little more.

138

Moving right, front row, another

Lady beams from out the past:

Composed, serene, she is the mother

Of the groom (the serious cast

Of whose face we earlier noted).

Asked to vote, one might have voted

Her the loveliest of her day –

So the old photos seem to say.

Born in eighteen sixty-seven,

Young Grace Rose was willowy, tall…

And as a Rose, endowed with all

The pride of family the leaven

Of propriety cannot

Quite disguise … no, not a jot.

139

As it happens, we’ve already

Met this lady once before –

Verse 120 shows us Neddy

Viewing the kindly face she wore,

Lying silent in her casket…

The boy wondered, could not ask it,

The question of what one should do;

He’d not been told, and never knew…

Kiss the dear old face in parting,

Or just stand there, looking on…

The moment drifts away… And gone,

Too, these faces Ned was starting

To bring back from a long-gone past;

Strange, though, how a smile can last.

140

The way that Neddy still remembers

Grandma’s smile connects with food:

School commenced, those cold Septembers,

Ruining Ned’s vacation mood;

But, come lunch time, off he took him-

Self down Elm Street to where she’d cook him,

Grandma would, her unique dish:

‘Twas always meat, and never fish.

And the meat was lean and ready,

Being pre-cut in squares, just so –

Potato too, some vegies… But, no:

The meat was it – pre-cut for Neddy –

Why? Grandma C.’s not here to say.

Ned cut no meat for many a day.

141

Why that smile, supreme, composed,

Exerts a power so regal still

Her aged grandson’s long supposed,

Could one but know, might help fulfill

An old ambition to decipher

The quaint code that makes a lifer

Of us each, some more, some less,

In point of how each feels distress

At the thought that there’s a freedom --

Free of guilt and free of frown,

Free from “having let her down” –

Out beyond what is decreed him-

Or herself to observe lifelong:

“Mother’d surely think this wrong.”

142

What did Grandma think of children?

She’d three sons and daughters two.

First-born Henry, strong, would build them

All a model farm. He knew

How to make things work for profit,

Liked to smoke – and who could stop it,

That habit banned in a brother’s house?

He was a man and not a mouse.

Second son had nerves not ready

For the battle that was life,

Quit school at last to flee the strife

In a mind that could not steady

To face study’s stern demand.

“Work outdoors!” Advice? Command?

143

Second son … Let’s look back at him…

(Kindly consult verse one-three-oh):

Long-nosed, unsmiling, tense, he’s sat him-

Self (where else?), not as a beau,

But undoubted bridegroom: serious

In his mien, no whit imperious….

Grim? Well, that were too unkind.

His youngest cannot read the mind

Of this man, the father who sired him –

Yet must wonder what he felt

About the future he’d been dealt,

At last… The young son who admired him

All his life knows well (too well)

What will happen… Foreknowledge is hell.

144

No, instead, let’s wind our taping

Of the past to an earlier stage:

(Time’s machine allows an aping –

– At least – or turning of the page)

Back to find an “outdoor” story,

A true tale that we might quarry

(Context is all, one hears it said)

For a sense of where it led –

Or failed to lead – that path of working

In the free and open air…

Dad went West – he took the dare.

On his own he worked – no shirking –

A full season in the wheat,

Up the long coast, in the heat.

145

A season doing migrant labor,

Following the harvest north,

Lodging with roughnecks, being neighbor

Perhaps with men of dubious worth…

Later he said that Steinbeck’s picture

Of that world was wrong. No stricture

Had our Dad in his account

About that life… Does this amount

To a tale for wife and offspring?

Perhaps, but I don’t think it so.

Father’s virtue was no show –

It was real, the one defining

Clue to what in the end he was:

An honest man, whate’er the cause.

146

Steinbeck wrote in the Depression –

Different times, whate’er the truth.

Hard to know, but my impression…

Research! Research! Go find the proof

In those boxes of old letters,

Or suitcase stuffed with shreds and tatters

That, lugged East, waits down the hall…

Break the lock, let contents all

Spill their secrets old and wormy

In the aisle between the stacks

Of books read, unread (naught lacks,

Surely, but time)… spilled secrets squirmy

With old corpses and decay

Decades-long deprived of day....

[This can't go on, the grandson mutters --

The grandson now is eighty-five –

Letters, poems -- all that clutters

A life half-dead, yet still alive

With a quaint desire for others –

Yet unknown and secret brothers,

Or old friends -- to feel the beat

Of his hidden heart, the heat

Of his lusts, his secret passions...

Scandalous! Oh, let them say,

Old Cranny too once had his day.

Verses, letters, scorn for fashions...

True to the words Est ist der Geist

Haunting those books so overpriced.]

147

Let's suppose it's this, the story

Ned's trying to dope out on his own:

How the wedding night – that night of glory –

Went for two who'd moaned the moan

Never yet, though more than thirty...

Did they both think sex was dirty,

That is, sacred, something pure,

Awkward, something to endure..?

This, the inquiry forbidden,

The "primal scene" it is a sin

To break the lock to see, look in....

Don't ask, don't pry. That kitchen midden

Should not be the subject of

A dig.... No, not that night of love....

148

All this re Grandma C and Father –

Let us leave it and proceed

With a minimum of blather

Down the line of guests. Goateed,

Reserved, a gent is sitting

Beside Grandma, as is fitting –

He's her husband, Edwin A.

(A Cranston name for many a day,

As old tombstones testify

Up in the hills of Stephentown).

Grandpa seems to wear a frown

In the photo. What could justify

Such a notion? Hard to tell –

A trick of light, no doubt, is all.

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